The Beguiling
by Zagzagael
Summary: A time turner fic. How Albus Dumbledore's life was affected by allowing Hermione Granger use of a time turner during her Third Year.
1. Default Chapter

He lay on his back, the canopy of trees mottling the sunlight falling upon his face, the warmth of the Spring air contrasting with the cool grass beneath him. Knees bent, one long leg jauntily crossed over the other, foot keeping time with the song sung by the pair of capercaillies chasing one another through the treetops. Under half-closed eyes he watched her move along the banks of the water, picking flowers, stooping low, and exposing her lovely, curving backside to him. She had slipped his shirt over her head and the hem of it fell to the tops of her thighs. She crouched low and he saw her hands working her lapful of flowers. She lifted a crown of colour to her dark hair and set it upon her head; turned and looked at him slyly. He sat up and called to her. She grinned seductively back at him. He crossed his legs and sat straighter, wanting her, watching her. 

Her hands moved amongst the picked blossoms for long moments and then she stood and flowers fell around her bare feet. She walked towards him, hips swaying, and eyes bright, her hair crowned. She knelt before him and offered another crown of flowers. He inclined his head graciously and she laid the crown on one of his bare knees and with long-fingered hands reaching over his head, over his broad shoulders she caught up his bound hair and unwound the leather thong. She combed his hair out, fanning it across his strong back, and then she lifted the crown and placed it on his head. 

He reached up and pulled her by the waist to him. She slipped her legs around him, bringing the soles of her feet together behind his back as  he lifted her onto his lap. He slipped his hands up under the shirt and caressed her skin. She leaned back and took the sides of his face between her palms, her thumbs rubbing at his bearded cheeks, smoothing the ends of his moustache along the firm edge of his upper lip. 

"You are like Arthur. You will be a king," she said softly, looking at him. 

"I am not a king, Vivian, I am a wizard."

"Yes, Albus, you are a very great and powerful wizard." She leaned in and kissed him on one eyelid, then the other. She tilted his face up to hers and caught his lips firmly beneath hers. She pulled back, "Perhaps the most powerful wizard in the world."

He smiled and reached up with his mouth, to kiss her again. "Perhaps." He tugged the shirt over her head and dropped it. She rose up, letting him nuzzle at first one breast, then the other. She arched her back.

"But first you will be King," she whispered down into the woven flowers crowning his shining hair. She lowered herself into his masculine lap, pressed her breasts against him, wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him again.

~***~

Headmaster Dumbledore was seated behind his desk, his elbows planted firmly on the deep dark mahogany desktop. His hands cradled his head, the elegantly squared fingertips massaging at his skull. He had not looked up at either one once since ushering them both into his office and indicating the chairs and tea. The minutes had begun to stretch out thinly.

Minerva cast a sideways glance over at Severus seated beside her. With an imperceptible shrug of his shoulders and small lift of one eyebrow he telegraphed his own confusion back to his colleague. They looked across the desk at Dumbledore's bent head. Suddenly, the older man raised his head and looked from Severus to Minerva and then brought both hands to his face. He smoothed his long moustaches away from his upper lip and combed down through the impossibly white, incredibly long beard. He was staring above their heads, into space.

"Thank you. Thank you both for coming and waiting to hear what I have to say."

"Well, of course, Albus," Minerva crooned softly. Snape nodded.

"What I am about to tell you, the things I'm about to say, are going to be shocking things. I know this and I warn you of it beforehand, although, there really is no way for me to prepare you completely." He sighed and stood slowly.

He walked to the tall, narrow window and stood, seemingly gazing out at the grounds of the school, far out into the Forbidden Forest. "I am going to tell you why I've never married. Why I have never left Hogwarts and why, even though it was I who defeated Grindelwald, why I understand that Voldemort will be slain by another and my role in his destruction is to be," he chewed on the inside of his cheek, "something else." His voice had grown softer and he remained standing at the glass. "Many years ago, decades, nearly a century." He sighed, "Another lifetime." He was quiet, then continued, "When I was a younger man, I, I had an experience with a young woman that changed my life. Forever changed it, altered the course, perhaps, of my destiny. I do not know." 

He turned now and walked back to face his two confessors, leaned a long thigh against the edge of the desk and crossed his arms. "She came to me…you see this is a sort of fairy tale, she rose up nude out of the green depths of the small pond that feeds off the lake, just inside the Forbidden Forest. With no hesitation on my part, I took her, there on the banks, took her virginity which she offered to me like a precious gift."

Snape started, moved forward and uncrossed his legs. Minerva's teacup rattled in the saucer she held aloft. Dumbledore nodded slightly.

"We spent two days together, never venturing forth, eating handfuls of berries, drinking water off one another's skin. And I became completely ensnared. She was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen, physically flawless and she shone from within a beacon that seemed to call to me, me alone. I felt as though I was matched to her and she to me. I know it is cliché, but I felt complete, this woman completed me."

"She disappeared late the second day. Like that, gone," he waved the fingers of one hand. "I watched her dissolve before my very eyes. And I knew then that there was some magic afoot, that the encounter bode of something bigger than I, bigger than she, bigger than both of us. I searched for her. I searched for her for years." He closed his pale blue eyes in pain. "Years. And I longed for her. Dreamt of her."

Minerva gasped. "Oh, Albus."

Snape spoke, "And you stayed here at Hogwarts in hopes of finding her. Having her resurface from that lake."

Dumbledore nodded slowly, looking carefully at his Potions Master, raising his eyebrows slightly and frowning, "Or perhaps I have been trapped here…" he trailed off.

Minerva began to her feet, but Albus waved her back to a seating position, she asked softly, "You never saw her again?"  
  


He smiled ruefully, his eyes dark with a bitterness, "Yes, I did see her again. Seven years ago."

Snape put his teacup on the tea table and sat back stiffly.

Minerva smiled, her face hopeful. "Yes?" 

"At the Sorting Ceremony. She was eleven years old."


	2. Two

For seven years she had watched him, been consumed by him. She allowed her life to be wound around him like threading a spool. He became a center for her and everything she did became defined by that center.

During her first years as a Ravenclaw student, she watched him with awe and respect and endless, protective amounts of admiration. Looking up, up into the face of his kindness, she loved him fiercely and wanted to be held like a child in the circle of his protecting arms. But by her sixth year, puberty threw its hand into the game and she grew long in limb and deep in emotion and she began to see him as a man, a physical creature who moved with grace and strength. She looked at him from eyes that had opened in her heart. Saw the span of his shoulders, the length of his thigh, watched him walk and listened to him talk with a woman's senses. 

Within the leader she saw the potentialities of leadership. Within the mentor she saw the man, and she desired that man.

From the first moment she had spied the time turner necklace around Hermione Granger's neck her quick and dangerous intelligence put two and two together. She seized upon the possibility of making her fantasy a reality. She could have him, then, she could and she would. She had spent months planning it out, thinking of it, obsessing over the details.

She approached the young Gryffindor girl and tantalized her with the generous offer of her copious notes, notes that would lead to solving Vector's year-long school-challenging arithmancy problem, allowing the Gryffindor House the opportunity to win substantial points. She had to discipline her own facial muscles as the longing surface in the young girl's eyes. Granger wanted it badly enough that she agreed to loan the older girl the necklace for a weekend.

Vivian spent days agonizing over which weekend, where she could go, how she could find him in the darkness of the past. She studied, she learned and she watched. 

~***~

"Vivian Robinson," Snape said this clearly. Dumbledore staggered back as though struck.

Minerva brought a shaking hand up to her mouth, her lips forming a perfect oh shape, her breath escaping in a long, low sound, "Miss Granger's time turner."

Snape's head swiveled and he brought a hand up to his own face, his fingers tented over his brow, his eyes fastened on his palm, "Oh, Merlin's beard."

"Have I been so lacking in circumspect behavior?" Albus's voice was stricken, his hooded gaze moving slowly between Severus and Minerva.

"Oh, Albus, it is Miss Robinson, then?" Minerva's face folded into an expression of empathy and the older wizard was as still as stone. "She has always been a particular favorite of yours." The witch's voice was soft, forgiving. "But I am not suggesting, Albus, on any level in any way have you been untoward or guilty of suspect behavior. No, no, not at all."

He nodded slowly at this, turned and walked around the desk, trailing long fingers across its edge, he settled back down into the chair and Fawkes squawked at him from his perch. He raised his hand, motioning to the phoenix and mumbled, "Yes, yes, Fawkes."

Severus and Minerva exchanged glances. Severus cleared his throat but it was Minerva who spoke. She leaned forward and gently placed her cup and saucer besides Snape's on the small tea table. She absentmindedly picked up the sugar tongs and clicked them together, once, twice, then self-consciously dropped them with a silvery clatter and moved up to sit primly on the edge of her seat. "Albus, why are you telling these things to us? Why?"

Severus snorted, "Is it really not obvious, Minerva?"

She looked at him wounded, then narrowed her eyes in thought.

"It isn't really, perhaps, so obvious, Minerva." The Headmaster splayed his hands on the desktop and pushed himself to a standing position once more. "You need to understand the subtleties, the subtleties wound into the story." He sighed and turned his gaze again to the window. "Everything I've done from that time on was because of that time, because of her. The things we whispered to one another, the dreams we spoke about, the promises we made into each other's ears. I defeated Grindelwald because of something Vivian had intimated. I made choices that perhaps I would not have made otherwise…because of omens and signs I interpreted through the looking glass of that time shared. I believe that I am standing here, before you now, ensconced in this place, part of this past present and future because of her."

Snape leapt to his feet and then went still, fearful of any more movement betraying the panic that flowed through his body like water under the glacial surface. He was frozen by his fear, by the images painted in the Headmaster's words.

He shook his head and choked out, "No."

Albus turned to him and raised both eyebrows, nodding, "Yes." 

"Albus," his voice hissed across the fire lit room.

Albus shook his head and laughed low, "Do not believe for one moment, Severus, that I am unfamiliar with the way you are now feeling. I know of what you fear. I understand the panic of this situation. Who is she? What does it mean? Why me?"

"Could it not be that she is a young woman in love, who made a decision not knowing how it would affect you…us?"

"Of course it could be. And I believe that is what it is. But even with such an innocuous foundation, what has been built upon it is mind staggering in its implications. One act, one decision, forever altering, touching, so many…it is beyond my scope of understanding. But," he held up a long index finger and said softly, "but, to answer your question Minerva, she has made the decision but has not yet acted upon it."

Minerva gasped, her face had drained of all color and in her lap she wound the fingers of one hand in and around the fingers of the other. "You are asking us whether or not we should stop this from happening?"

He settled slowly back down into his chair and Snape followed, throwing himself into his own chair.

"I suppose that is exactly what I'm asking."

Snape exhaled audibly. "Are you," he hesitated, "involved with her at this time?"

The Headmaster looked over his spectacles at the younger man. He closed his eyes and turned his head, "I am involved with her in all times. But to answer you more directly, no we are not intimately connected now."

"That hurts you?" Snape's voice a low hum.

Albus kept his face turned away, "Yes, it hurts me. Can you not imagine it, Severus? I've waited decades for her, have had no other since her. And now, well, now. I can feel my heart missing beats, I don't mean this in a sentimental fashion, I mean the physical organ itself. When she is near me, my body betrays me. I have no idea how I will react, what I will be driven to, if she goes," his voice benedictive, "and then returns. She is no longer a student in my eyes."

"She is no longer a student," Severus spoke the words as though he had just understood the meaning of each one. He brought two fingers up to his forehead and with a quick movement motioned behind him. "I fear that I sound like the man who can only see clearly with hindsight. But who protested this use of the time turner from the beginning? Who was it who felt horrified at the suggestion that Miss Granger," he nearly spit out her name, "should be given such a device? For her classload of all unimaginable reasons?" He was nearly shouting now. "What other mischief will we be prey to because of this allowance?"

~***~

Minerva spoke in hushed tones, "This is what I've been able to surmise by perusing records and speaking briefly with both Filius and the girl. Her father is the somewhat eccentric but admittedly powerful wizard, Diones Vavosar. I know, I had no idea, either. Not quite certain how that got by the staff. Albus must know, doesn't he know everything?" 

Snape cleared his throat and McGonagall blushed before continuing, "She does not know her father; her mother left him early into their marriage, before the child was born, even. Yes, he is in Siberia. Vivian's mother traveled to Wales and raised the child with her sister. Unfortunately, the mother died when Vivian was still quite young and the girl was cared for by the maiden aunt. She returns to the aunt's home for holidays and between terms, but essentially, Severus this is a young woman who has raised herself. Hers is a brilliant mind, no question, thus her sorting into Ravenclaw, but I consulted the Sorting Hat and the Hat spoke of an internal conflict that amounted to a draw between Ravenclaw and Slytherin. It told me, _she's a cunning one_." Minerva raised her eyebrows and Severus held her gaze. "A motherless child, effectively an orphan, raised by a relative," she trailed off.

"It would appear that Albus has a soft spot for a certain type of individual." Snape mused. Minerva inhaled sharply and he raised an eyebrow.

"Vivian turned eighteen over the Winter Holiday, but had already emancipated herself from guardianship when she applied for full legal capacity at the age of sixteen." Minerva finished

"Cunning, indeed," Snape looked away. 

"Severus," her voice was soft and tinged with sadness, "what do you think? I mean, of it all, what do you really think?"


	3. Three

It was the last week of April and the month was taking its lamblike leave in a joyous leaping of warmth and sunshine. The Green was dotted with students seated and prone, studying class work or one another. The thawing grounds sloping down to the lake were also populated with black-robed students and crows. Vivian sat, quite alone, beneath a large Scots pine, near the water's edge. She had her knees drawn up to her chest, her fingers twined into her bare toes. Her sensible school boots and heavy wool socks cast aside. She stared out over the water and let her thoughts drift upon the surface. A sound whispered from behind her and she knew that it would be he, before he even came into her view and settled himself down.

"Headmaster Dumbledore," she smiled at him.

"I thought I might find you out here. On a beautiful day like today." He rested his back against the trunk of the tree, feet planted on the ground. His wrists a caesura on his splayed knees and she looked at the elegant, long fingers relaxed, the square tips of them, and the long, smooth nails. She saw that the backs of his hands were dusted with white hairs and let her gaze trace up and over one wrist and peek down into the voluminous sleeve of his robe. The white hair was thick and riotous running up his forearm. She looked up at his face and he was studying her over the tops of his spectacles. She blushed and looked down at her toes, squeezing them tight.

He took off the spectacles and leaned his head back against the tree, closing his eyes. "This is a good tree."

 "Yes." She laughed softly, "All trees are good trees. This one a particularly good tree, though."

He opened one eye and smiled at her. "I used to sit under this tree when I was a Seventh Year, myself. Sit, right here, in this exact spot and look out over the water, and think about things."

She lowered her knees to the ground and turned to face him, her body bent in a feminine curve, her hands trailing through the gathered leaves and bits of moss. "You did?"

He nodded. "I did. 

"And here you are sitting under it still."

"So I am." He looked out over the water, let his gaze slide across the surface, and follow the water down to the far end where it disappeared into a dark copse of trees just at the edge of the Forbidden Forest. "It is nearly Beltane. I remember the celebrating, the welcoming of Summertime in years long past. That isn't done so much anymore, or with such dedicated abandon."

"I'm certain, Headmaster," her voice was teasing, "that Hogwarts has never celebrated May Day with any sort of abandon, dedicated or not." Her eyes shone and she caught some wayward strands of her black hair and palmed them back into place. A slight breeze blew the strands back over her face.

He laughed, very loudly and she joined him. "No, perhaps not. But there were celebrations in the villages." He was suddenly quiet, watching her watch him. "I celebrated Beltane my last year here as a student. Swam in the small pond there," he lifted a hand and indicated the far side of the lake, "just inside the forest, under a full moon."

Her lips parched open, her eyes wide, her face suddenly flushed and he remembered her drinking water from his cupped hands.

Her voice called him back out of the reverie, "The forest was not forbidden to students then?" 

"No. No, not then. It wasn't forbidden at all. I forbade it, when I became headmaster. Put your boots back on, child. You will be late for History and make this old man late for his tea."

She looked at him from under lowered lashes. "Do you feel like an old man?" she asked softly, pulling on one sock, then the other. She held her boots and looked at him, waiting.

"Do I feel like what I am? Yes I suppose I do. Some days more than others."

She pushed her feet into the boots and laced them quickly, a flourish of a bow she tucked back down into the tops. She stood and he stood beside her, looking down at her as she looked up at him. A long moment passed between them. He turned and began to walk back up the slope, slowing down so she could keep step with his longer legs. They reached the top of the hill, the school Green stretched out in front of them. He stopped and turned to her.

"Do you know, Vivian, what is meant when one talks of a 'Greenwood marriage?'" She shook her head. He nodded, put his spectacles back on and the late afternoon sunlight glinted off the glass and hid his eyes. "Go, you will be late."

~***~

Beltane Eve. 

The last night of April, she sat in the Great Hall and turned her huge, dark eyes upon him and something shifted in the way that his eyes caught hers and she was held by his gaze. His head tilted to one side, one long finger tapping at his lips. The world narrowed to the two of them, across the room filled with students and staff, she felt him questioning her with his eyes. He inclined his head and nodded. She stood immediately and fled.

Dumbledore stood and began to leave the Hall. Snape fell into step beside him. They walked quietly, matched strides, out the doors and to the bottom of the staircase. "It is done," Albus said and climbed the stairs.

~***~

Under a cloak of darkness, the night falling quickly, her fingers wrapped tightly around the time turner hanging from her neck, she ran into the Forbidden Forest. She found the pool, the green water warm under the waning moonlight. She shed her clothing, long black hair falling past her waist, the necklace her only jewelry and she stepped into the water and turned the hourglass. She sunk beneath the surface and when she rose up again the moon was full and shining brightly and she looked to the shore and he was standing there on the edge, staring at her. 

He was tall and lean. His beard cropped close against the sharp planes of his face. His hair was golden brown and wrapped in a leather lace, falling thickly halfway down his back, his shoulders broad, his legs long and muscular. He was naked. She stood in the water, droplets falling from her skin, she pushed back the hair from her face and holding out both arms she beckoned to him with her hands. And he came to her with no hesitation. 

She thought she would not ever catch her breath again when he took her into his arms and studied her face. He brought his mouth down to hers and all thought left her and she had the experience of loving him.

On the evening of the second day, she roused, their bed a grassy bower on the edge of the water. She leaned in and kissed his sleeping lips. He turned and pulled her to him, but she whispered nonsense words and lulled him back to sleep. She kissed him once more, then rose and walked out into the water. She turned the hourglass and did not see that he had followed her and was standing on the edge watching her dissolve into the future.

Vivian stepped out of the water, the loss of him so tangible that she thought she might cry out. She found her clothes and dressed quickly. She could not bear to be in that place another moment and she ran, ran back to the castle. 

A house-elf found her as she entered the school. Her hair dripping wet, soaking her robes. He led her to Headmaster Dumbledore's office and left her standing there alone. Her heart was beating to break and she could not control the tremble of her limbs. 

She heard a door click shut and looked up to see him descending the curving staircase behind his desk. He was watching her intently as he drew closer to her. He walked around the desk and came to stand before her and she could not tear her eyes away from his. She held herself steady and breathed but her limbs seemed to jump of their own accord.

"I think I have to sit down, sir," she whispered and he nodded and she sat.

"Now, you have returned," his voice was low, but persistent and sad.

She nodded slowly, looking up at him and he came to her then and with a sound of defeated acceptance he crouched before her and laid his head upon her knees. "I searched for you for years, you know. Years."

"I thought you would think I was a dream."

"I did not dream of such things before you came."

"You did not? What then, what did you dream of?"

"I had dreams of light and peace. I dreamed of courage. But after, afterwards, I only dreamt of you."

She reached out her shaking hands and placed them on his head, the trembling left her and she wound her fingers down through the long, white hair. She bent over him and brought a handful of hair up to her lips.

"How do you think I felt when I saw you, seven years ago? And you were a child?"

She shook her head, silent.

"I knew that my dream had not been a dream. And I watched you grow and wondered if I should stop you from doing this…"

He stood and moved back away from her. She stood and reached for him. He held up one hand and shook his head. "Is this what you want, Vivian? This old man? This aged body?"

She covered her mouth with both hands. Her eyes wide.

"What gave you the right?" he whispered.


	4. Four

Tears sprang from her eyes in a torrent of uncontrollable emotion and they stood facing one another, soul-bared, laid open. 

He watched her react to his words and his heart cramped down behind his ribs. She was backing away from him, her eyes wide with pain and tears flowing, her hands covering her bruised lips, bruised to fullness he knew from his own ministrations in loving her for two days.

She shook her head, her hands still clasped over her mouth. Slowly she brought them up to her eyes and wiped away her tears, "I don't know."

"You don't, do you?"

"I believed," she faltered, "I thought…"

He cut her off with a raised hand, his voice low but fierce, "What was it that you thought, Vivian? And I cannot comprehend what it was that you believed. I have tried for seven years now and find that it defies me."

She lowered her hands to her sides, her mouth set in a smooth line, her eyes blazing, "I thought and I believed. I thought I had no other choice for myself, for you. I believed that I had been shown a door and I had to walk through it." The look in her eyes softened, "I believed in my dreams."

"You believed in your dreams?" he raised a cynical eyebrow at her, but his voice was pleading.

"Not daydreams, Albus, real dreams, the dreams that haunt my days. The dreams that I dream nightly. About you and I. The dreams that have come to define me my whole life long."

"Your whole life long?"

"Since I can first remember. I think," her voice was filled with wonder, "that my first memory is a dream of you. I have cast my thoughts back into my life, trying to separate the dream from the waking," she looked at him, her eyes filled with longing and despair, "and I cannot. The dreams are as real to me as the waking. You ask me how I think you felt when I first arrived here and you realized that I was not a dream. I can ask the same of you, more forcefully, when I arrived here and I first saw you I thought I was dreaming. But you were real. And my dreams folded themselves into the shape of a bird that took flight from sleep and unfolded into my days." She looked away from him, "The only difference between us would appear to be that when you found me again I was a child, but I had to go back in time to find you as a young man because in my dreams you are exactly as you are now. Exactly as you are right now." 

"Exactly as I am now? I am Headmaster of this school; you are a student here and have been since you were eleven years old."

"I am no longer eleven years old."

"No, you are not." He took in the figure of the young woman, his lover in the dream that had become his life, her long black hair still wet and dripping on the floor, the clear dark eyes burning with desire for him and her lips set with strength and will. He took another step closer to her, but still held himself away from her, "Do not forget that you are now just hours returned from a time that is a hundred years in the past for me. Vivian, I am over a century older than you and yet daily I come to believe more and more that I would not be who I am if it were not for you. I have been called the most powerful wizard alive today and I wonder of your role in the bestowing of such a title. Exactly as I am now is how you shaped me."

"If it was I who shaped you, then the Fates wanted you so shaped."

~***~

It had been over one week and Vivian was sick, her heart ached, her head ached, her body ached. He had studiously avoided her and she had to content herself with the healing draught of seeing him three times a day in the Great Hall. And during those times she found herself more and more lost in the space that separated them, the space across the cavernous room, over the heads of students, past the eyes of staff, the space that seemed to stretch out between the two of them far more than the decades of time that had kept them away from one another. 

She sighed and looked up again, he was watching her. She tried a small smile and he looked away. 

She looked pale and drawn, circles around her beautiful eyes, her hair pulled off her face in a severe plait. He could not bear to look at her exposed neck, the curved edges of the tops of her ears peeking out from between thick strands of dark hair. Unbidden a memory surfaced, he had taken her ears into his mouth, whispering to her, his tongue following his words down, down, down. He stood immediately and left the Great Hall, between the tables, nodding at students, passing behind her, her head bent, her shoulders slumped as though his presence came as a physical blow.

He saw her hands tremble as she brought a goblet of pumpkin juice up to her lips.

~***~

She was under the Scots pine again. The Leaving Feast was less than a month's time away and she felt it looming on the horizon, the setting sun of her day. She had stopped looking towards the distance as though it were a promised land to be reached. She had grown soul sick.

A soft whispering, the rustle of robes and he was seated beneath the tree, his back pressed against the trunk, legs crossed, hands held together in his lap. She did not turn to him and his heart called to her but she was deaf to the pleadings of it.

"Vivian," he whispered in his dusky voice. She shook her head.

"Vivian," he called to her, the divining rod of his voice finding the tears inside her throat, her lungs, behind her eyes. "Oh, my sweet thing, do not cry." And his voice found the hidden water and she brought the back of one hand up to her mouth and muffled a sob. "Come here. Come to me."

She shook her head again.

"We will find our way. We will. You must be patient, you cannot rush the gates. You must discipline your desire."

"My dreams showed me my desire, and that desire made my dreams become reality. My discipline was in the achieving. I have recognized, I have let it rule my life, I accepted what I was being offered and if it were not mine for the taking I would not have been given it."

"But this involves two people, a destiny interwoven. Do you think that I have not accepted what has been offered me?"

"We have begun at the two farthest ends, this is the middle, you see? You waited for me for a hundred years and I, also, will have to live without you. This is our time, now. I am anxious for that time to begin. I do not understand the discipline you have had to learn, that is not for me now."

He was silent for a long time turning her words over and over in his mind. And he thought of Fawkes and the teaching of the Phoenix. He needed to let go and rise again, with her. "Come," he said quietly.

She stood and looked down at him, she took the three steps towards him that kept them apart and she fell to her knees and buried her face in his lap.


	5. Finis

Headmaster Dumbledore had been standing in the Potions classroom for over twenty minutes. Snape had gone about his occupation, mixing a trial preparation brew for the following day's Newt level Potions class. He could feel something radiating from the other man, an energy he could not quite classify, so he stopped attempting to and maintained his steady movements. He glanced at the hourglass in the corner and raised one eyebrow as it dropped another minute's worth of sand.

Then the gravelly voice broke ragged around the edges and Snape closed his eyes from a momentary stab of sympathy. He stilled his hands, wiped them absentmindedly on the front of his robes and turned to look at Albus. 

He was standing quietly beside a student table, but his hands pressed flat against its surface spoke of tension. "Is it," for a long moment he looked down at his hands, spreading his fingers wide across the marble topped lab table, "ridiculous? I mean, is it…"

Snape moved quickly, beside the older wizard in two strides. He cut him off with an unexpected hand on his forearm. "Albus, it is the furthest thing from ridiculous. I think, and I have spent hours now contemplating it, I think that this is what is referenced when Destiny is discussed." The most powerful wizard in the world peered at him, his blue eyes wary, his upper lip twitched once. "Do not twist this around in such a way that you feel shame or guilt or a need for denial. You have been denied for," the Potions Master turned away, crossing his arms, sliding his hands down into the sleeves of his robe, "you have been denied for a lifetime. This is yours. It belongs to you and to her. You have more than you can imagine. Yes, less than some, but more than most. These questions are maneuverings in a mental labyrinth that I feel I can wander through, but not you. These questions represent the maze itself and to question that, to question that part of the conundrum is to negate. And we are not going to say no. Not to you, not to the Fates, not to this Destiny that is part of what you are. Some questions need to be answered with a simple, it just is. I think," he paused and tripped over a desire to bestow an endearment upon the Headmaster, "this is one of those questions."

~***~

Sunday morning breakfast. The house tables empty. Staff wandering into the Great Hall slowly, relaxed, but not yet acclimated to their free time. The Headmaster sat in his usual spot, eating slowly, his ears ringing with the phantom melee of students now departed for the summer holiday, he missed, suddenly the comforting sound of the morning owls. The casement windows were flung open, the smell of the green perfuming the room and a lone bird flew in on the breeze. The bird swooped gracefully down towards him.

It was a capercaillie. And draped around its neck was a crown of flowers. He reached out and lifted the crown from over the bird's head and with a flick of his wrist held out a small tidbit. The bird took it from between his fingers before hopping to the edge of the table and taking flight, fading against the blue sky outside the windows.

Albus looked down at the woven flowers in his hand. And closed his eyes.

A voice beside his shoulder shook him gently. "It looks like a perfect day for a dip in that small pond just inside the forest, Albus."

The celestially-robed wizard looked up slowly into the eyes of the black-robed wizard standing just behind his chair. The other lazily cocked one eyebrow at him. 

With a deep-throated laugh, he rose from the chair, nodding, "I believe you're right, Severus." He clasped the younger man's hand, "And, Severus? Don't expect me for lunch or dinner."

Snape smirked, "Or breakfast tomorrow?" 

Albus strode out of the Great Hall. The crown of flowers in his hand.

~***~

Slowly she walked toward him, both her hands out, palms down, fingers beckoning. Instinctively he reached out, reached back, towards the woman, towards the past and as she took both his hands in hers and turned them over, bringing them to her face, he let her pull him into the present towards the future. She pushed one of his hands up against her cheek and he responded by holding it there, caressing her with his thumb. His other hand she bent her head over and kissed. Slowly she ran her tongue down the length of his index finger to the squared tip and with a slight pursing of her lips sucked his finger deeply into her mouth. He closed his eyes and inhaled sharply. She smiled around his finger and brought his middle finger up and between her lips. He moaned softly and Vivian let her own eyes flutter shut, her awareness completely centering on his fingers. She took the last two into her mouth, swirling her tongue around each, licking between them and then kissing his palm. She held his hand splayed before her and he opened his eyes and looked down at her. Very slowly she pulled his hand to her breast and cupped it there. He responded instantly by pulling her into his arms and kissing her wildly. She moaned his name. He held her tightly by the shoulders and gently pushed her away from him. He looked down into her face.

"Vivian," he whispered and her heart leapt into her throat. She remembered this, she remembered. But in the memory his voice held no such pain and she ached and surprised herself as a tear broke from one eye and skirted down across her cheek. He caught it with the ball of his thumb and rubbed it dry against her skin. 

She nodded up at him, "Yes, Albus, yes."

His eyes questioned her and she brought a finger up to his lips, quieting him, nodding still. She whispered, "I want you. You." She traced his upper lip, curled her finger under his flowing moustache and smoothed back the long, white hair. She combed up through his beard, both hands now on his jaw line, cupping his face, tracing the strong bones.

And he closed his eyes and brought his mouth down to hers and gave himself over completely. This moment defined by decades of searching and decades of waiting and nights of remembering and nights filled with dreaming. She was here, in his arms, and he pulled her closer to him. His body was on fire and he wanted nothing more than to pull her into his conflagration and have them both consumed, devoured by flame, turn to ash and fall upon the earth, commingled together for all eternity, fearing nothing but the wind. He would not let go of her again. Ever again.

~***~

"If I come not,  
The lady Vivian will remember me,  
And say: 'I knew him when his heart was young,   
Though I have lost him now.   
Time called him home,  
And that was as it was; for much is lost  
Between Broceliande and Camelot.'"  ~ Edwin Arlington Robinson's "Merlin"

~Author's Notes~

This piece is dedicated to LeoGryffin. She has created one of the most inspiring writing communities at www.livejournal.com called 30minutefics. This fic was birthed there. 

Find and read Robinson's lovely epic poem "Merlin" - a rare interpretation of the wizard's famous female apprentice as a positive love interest. Yay, Edwin!


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